Optimus Prime
"I need to be out there making a difference, changing lives!" − Profile Once an academic, Orion Pax felt that he was must to do something better with his existence other then what he was built for. Upon leaving the academy, he soon became a peace officer and raised through the ranks. He earned himself a reputation for being a strict, no nonsense officer who leads by example and in turn tries to inspire his fellow officers with his deeds. Earning awards for his abilities, he eventually became the Captain of the Rodion police force. History Early Years Orion chose to follow a life of crime-fighting, originally he was chosen to be an Archivist. As such, he attended the Institute and excelled, graduating from the Institute for Higher Programming and enrolling in the Academy of Science and Technology, while in the religious quarter he proved a skeptic, doubting the existence of the Knights of Cybertron. No longer interested in the intellectual pursuits after his findings, Orion instead opted to join the Rodion police force, intent on making a difference. He went on to become a rising star in Cybertron's police force who served as an inspiration to his fellow officers, eventually becoming captain of the Rodion police force. He was notably liberal in his duties, even convincing his old Academy friend Ratchet to run a free clinic in the city's Dead End. When the manual class miner Megatron was arrested for assault, Orion was intrigued by his treatise on non-violent resistance. After doing some investigation and discovering he wasn't guilty, Orion had Megatron released and told him that he had read his work and to keep working for change. In addition, Orion had his officer Whirl locked up for abusing Megatron while he was in jail—an action that made the Senate very unhappy, as they had actually orchestrated Megatron's arrest in order to silence his voice of dissent. A gang of Senate thugs tried to coerce Orion into releasing Whirl, and when he refused, they returned to break Whirl out and kill Orion. Convinced now that Megatron's belief in the corruption of the Senate was true, Orion took his attackers down with a mix of righteous fury and tactical skills, and then forced his way into the Grand Imperium. There, he made a defiant speech to the Senate, saying his eyes had been opened by Megatron, only to be forcibly removed from the building. But Orion's speech had succeeded in reaching one of the Senate's members: Senator Shockwave, who had for some time been searching for prospective new candidates to help free Cybertron from the Senate's corrupt stranglehold. Arranging for Orion's release, Shockwave had his injuries repaired and a cavity for the Matrix of Leadership added to his body, and the pair began working together in secret. Clampdown! In the dark times that followed, as the Senate initiated the Clampdown, and the Decepticon movement inspired by Megatron's writings grew in strength, Orion continued to do his duties the best he could. After saving the derelict Drift from some thugs and delivering him to Ratchet's clinic, Pax witnessed a news report on the death of the current Matrix bearer Nominus Prime, allegedly the victim a rust infection. Calling a meeting with Shockwave, Orion learned from him that the Senate were truly responsible for Nominus's death, and that a plan involving the Decepticons was currently in motion. With Decepticon sympathizer Senator Sherma having recently been murdered, Shockwave feared that fellow sympathizer Momus was in danger, and Pax rushed into action. Unfortunately, he arrived too late, and found Momus dead and officers Prowl and Tumbler fighting his murderer. Pax took out the killer, and upon discovering that he had been using a borrowed body from a Relinquishment Clinic, sent the other two officers to follow the lead. Pax himself, meanwhile, responded to a summons from Garrus-1, where an imprisoned Whirl, seeking revenge against the Senate that had abandoned him, informed Orion of a bombing plot Senator Proteus was masterminding. Regrouping with Prowl and Tumbler—who had discovered the Institute that the Senate was using to brainwash troublemakers—Pax and his allies realized that the Senate had planted a bomb inside Nominus Prime's corpse, intending to blame the destruction on the Decepticons, thereby allowing the Senate to send them all to The Institute to be corrected. Recruiting some super-powered "Outliers" from Shockwave's Academy of Advanced Technology to lend their powers to the effort, Pax led his team in removing the bomb—hidden in the form of a fake Matrix—from Nominus's body as it lay in state, though Pax had to defer to Ratchet in the actual bomb removal, which was wired in with complex locks. The theft successfully completed, the team departed, but, having not been contacted by Roller at the appointed time, Pax sped on ahead to investigate, returning just in time to find that Senate thugs Kroma, Macabre and the Heavies had attacked their safehouse to capture Shockwave. Pax took out one of the Heavies, but Shockwave agreed to surrender when Kroma threatened Roller's life. The remaining Heavy, Anvil, stayed behind to finish off Pax, but Pax used the Matrix-bomb to destroy his attacker. Believing that Shockwave would have been taken to the , Pax had Arcee lead him there, but they discovered the facility deserted: merely one of many Institutes, with no way of knowing in which Shockwave was being held. When next Orion saw Shockwave, he had undergone not only empurata, but a complex form of Shadowplay that stripped him of his emotions. Though Pax believed that Shockwave could overcome what had been done to him, the "new" Shockwave told him that he was not the same 'bot who had befriend him, and to give up on him. It would take some time for the truth to sink in that Shockwave really didn't care any more. On the Run Sentinel Prime, the Senate's chief enforcer and part of the senatorial faction who'd whacked Nominus, wanted Orion Pax dead for interfering. Pax, Roller, and the outliers went on the run. Luckily, he'd made contact with one of Shockwave's other allies and disciples: Zeta of Sistex, who became his newest mentor and backer. While on the lamb, Orion met with the leader of the rebels of Nyon, Hot Rod, and instantly became more interested in his cause, pledging to try to support Nyon in any way that he can. For a short time, he harbored the former Decepticon Shiftlock after a kill order was placed on her by Barricade. Unfortunately, duties that had called Orion away had kept him from being present when Shiftlock was kidnapped by Senator Ratbat and the two subsequently died in a mutual assault. It was also during this time that Pax learned that Sentinel had resorted to wholesale shadowplay and reprogramming to change the minds of Autobots that even had the slightest disagreement with him. Feint, one of those that was supposed to be responsible for those changes came to Pax and agreed that she would not carry out such duties. When she was ordered to force Scattershot under treatment, she faked the surgery, hoping that Scattershot would sell it. He did, but he and his team were returned to Tyger Pax for duty. When Sentinel Prime went on the offensive and captured the Forge, Orion was not part of the attack. Instead, he remained outside of it all, continuing to feel that there was a non-violent solution to the situation, even as it continued to devolve. With the Decepticon escape and subsequent murder of the Senate, Orion saw this final option slip away. War had come and he was helpless to stop it. Orion led the outliers and Hot Rod on a mission into the Forge to attempt to rescue Feint but learned that their actions were in vain - Megatron had ordered her executed because of her abilities. After speaking with Shockwave and failing one last time to get through to him, Orion took all the frames from the Forge including Feint and returned to the Decagon. The following day, with Megatron gloating on the Global-Broadband of his victory, Orion took him to task with becoming the exact opposite of his writings. With Sentinel's passing, Zeta has become the new Prime and pardoned Orion for his past transgressions. Orion's first task was to recruit Impactor into the Autobots. He also was introduced to Ariel, a former dancer turned Autobot recruit, and made fast friends with her. 20,000 Years Later During the interim of the time skip, Orion Pax worked diligently to assist with Zeta Prime. With Zeta Prime busy handling rebuilding the Senate in the wake of the massacre, Orion Pax was tasked to other duties. Among the first things that occurred was an upgrade into a new frame that powered up Orion's abilities. One of the first tests of this rebuild when Orion Pax was tasked with a prisoner exchange - the Decepticons had kidnapped Ratchet from the Free Clinic in Dead End and were demanding a pair of low caste Decepticons - Rack and Ruin in trade. The two Decepticons were fearful that Megatron would terminate them for being captured, something that Orion couldn't understand. Accompanying him on the mission was a wizened scholar, Alpha Trion. The old mech taught Optimus about several things during this mission, and when it turned out that Trion was the actual target of the Decepticon prisoner trade, Orion used what he was taught by both him and Rack and Ruin to assist the trio in escaping, even though Orion himself was captured and sent on a shuttle careening towards Rodion. Orion was able to deduce that the shuttle would crash harmlessly, that is until the shuttle was collided with another shuttle over Rust Spot and changed the trajectory of Orion's shuttle to Iacon. Using the fast transformation techniques taught to him by Rack and Ruin, Orion was able to escape his bonds and steer the shuttle clear of the city and crash it into an unpopulated area. Orion survived the crash with some heavy injuries - but he laments more over the loss of his lucky faceplate. Unfortunately, Orion did not know that Swerve would be the only survivor of the shuttle that his collided with. After this mission, with Zeta Prime busy handling rebuilding the Senate in the wake of the massacre, Orion Pax was tasked with leading the field team of Autobots. Assigned to his own base away from the Decagon, Orion created the Rapid Response unit. With him he brought many of the outliers, Ariel, Impactor, Wheeljack, Torque, and others. They are the mainstay for what is considered 'street' operations on Cybertron while Zeta Prime handles the so-called larger picture items. Autocracy Orion learned of recent attacks by the Decepticons, including the freighter 'Panamax', that had been raided and plundered by the Decepticons. He followed the trail of these supplies to Nyon where he discovered that the Decepticons were using these attacks to fuel a recruitment drive in that city. Orion Pax confronted Hot Rod about this and the answers he got further fractured the relationship between Pax and Rod. Now that Zeta Prime is considering issuing an arrest order on Hot Rod, Orion's ideals are becoming even more muddled in the bureaucracy that is occurring around him. Shortly after this, Orion took Windcharger with him into Nyon to set up an operation to crack down on the Black Market there. After noticing that there were several Autobot personal effects in the stuff that Swindle was selling to the citizens of Nyon, Orion had a momentary lapse of judgement that led to Swindle getting beaten to within an inch of permanent shutdown. Had it not been for the timely intervention of Hot Rod and some of his explosives, it is thought that Orion would have taken Swindle's life. After dropping Swindle off in the Autobase's brig, he retreated to his office where he remained throughout the cycle, lost in thought. After a few cycles of contemplation, Orion emerged from his office. He was still troubled and plagued with what he done until he had a conversation with Ariel, in which he mentioned what was going through his processors and was able to work out many of his problems. Their conversation was just starting to take a different direction when Orion overheard that a former Decepticon medic, Delirium, was in fact Feint, who Orion had thought was dead. Racing to Rodion, Orion was able to convince Feint's cojunx endura, Blurr, to allow them to bring Feint back to Autobase for debriefing on 20,000 years of indentured servitude and provide her with a new frame as her previous body had been interned and recycled. Miscellany Skills * Charisma * Battlefield Tactics * Police Procedure * Knowledge: Cybertronian Law * Super Cop * Suspicious Chest Compartment * Multi-Lingual (He can say 'Bring it on!' in 4,000 languages.) * Hand-to-Hand Combat (Energon Axe/Halberd) * Marksman * Leadership * Doing The Right Thing * Hot Rod's Idol Weapons Ion Blaster - Orion Pax's signature weapon, the ion blaster is an upgraded version of the nucleon rifle, with twice the normal rate of fire. Energon Axe - A halberd sized weapon, the energon axe wielded by Orion Pax as his primary melee weapon. Double-bladed, it was originally an honorary weapon as part of his title as Archivist but has become more useful as he can transform it from his body. Voice Actor Orion Pax is of course voiced by the great one himself - Peter Cullen. Sheet Orion Pax v1.0 - Archivist Under Sentinel Prime Orion Pax v2.0 - Field Commander under Zeta Prime Gallery Orion-pax-hipster.jpg Soundtrack * Fausdots - Soft Light (IDW Official Spotlight: Orion Pax) * Choir of Young Believers - Action/Reaction (IDW MTMTE #10) * I Am Kloot - No Fear of Falling (IDW MTMTE #11) * Brother Firetribe (feat Anette Olzon) - Heart Full of Fire Logs |} |}